Tuesday, 12 March 2013

The world is cruel and life
is full of bitterness and heartbreak. We will all experience loss and longing.
We will all be bought to our knees by desire. Welcome to twenty years in the
life of Heathcliff Hart.

CHAPTER ONE

September 1992

Atop the vast, windswept wilds of
Exmoor in the heart of the county of Devon stood Westcliff public boys’
boarding school. The edifice loomed over the dramatic scenery, battered by
cruel gales in winter, its craggy granite surfaces eroded by sea water.

Through its hallowed portals stepped
ten year old Heathcliff Hart, not conscious of all the feted alumni that had
passed before him, just wondering why his parents had abandoned him to this.

Although he was too young to
understand, Heath’s American parents were hanging on bitterly through the death
throes of their relationship as his father had just secured a lucrative
engineering position on an oil-rig in the North Sea.

His mother didn’t work. She was icily
beautiful and remote, seeking Heath’s company when it suited her and giving him
to a nanny when it didn’t. It had always been that way: starved for hugs and
affection. His father was faceless, absent for most of his life, a man Heath
had never known and probably never would.

What had he done to warrant this? Why
did they want him out of the way? Had he been naughty? Was he so unloved and
unwanted?

Despite regular parcels from his
mother containing books and games and other treats which Heath would cynically
come to see later as bribes to assuage her own conscience, he felt rejected
and unloved. He wondered if the other boys looked at him and saw a pariah,
someone worthless and undeserving of love.

Southern California to England was a
shock. His accent stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone around him sounded like
they were reading the news on the BBC or belonged in Buckingham Palace. He
struggled sometimes to understand.

His only friend was Mr. Campbell. Stephen
seemed like any other grown-up to him: old. Even though his teacher was only
twenty-four at the time, to Heath this seemed ancient and the man with the soft
voice and the glowing smile towered above the young Hart and awed him. But he
didn’t intimidate. Heath formed a bond with him instantly as soon as Stephen
opened his mouth and Heath heard that glowing west coast accent here, in
England of all places. He couldn’t believe his luck to find someone from home.

Stephen taught English, French and
biology. He was laid back to the point of horizontal, but he was so universally
liked that no one took advantage of this easy-going nature. Instead, he got
more work out of his students than any other teacher at the school, the vast
majority of which were stern professors who still wore gowns and slapped hands
with rulers.

Stephen was tall and slender with dirty
blond hair and pale blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. He
wore jeans and T-shirts. He had a black dragon tattoo on one arm that Heath
stared at in lessons and made up stories of fire-breathing and rescuing damsels
in distress later while lying in bed. That dragon seemed to shift on Stephen’s
creamy skin, the muscle beneath undulating, giving the beast life, branding its
image forever on Heath’s imagination as he became a devoted student for the
next eight years.

Heath’s roommate, William, was an
oddball. He collected worms and other insects in jars and kept them under his
bed, speaking to them in a whisper during the night. Heath thought if he had to
room with this boy until he left school, he might go insane. He lay with his
back turned, listening to the whispering at night, the hair on his neck
prickling, convinced his roommate was going to drop insects into his bed as he
slept, or worse, try to murder him.

The other boys seemed out of reach.
What did Heath have in common with upper-crust snobs from Southern England?
What did they know about being shipped five thousand miles away from home and
abandoned? He didn’t make an effort to speak to anyone, irrationally convinced
they must all hate him on sight anyway. Even at a young age he had an idea
Americans weren’t popular abroad. He made himself cold and aloof to protect his
vulnerable core, a strategy that would last the rest of his life.

One day Stephen asked him to stay
behind at the end of the lesson.

Heath paused in packing up his books
and pencils and regarded his teacher warily as Stephen sat at the front of the
class on his desk, legs swinging casually. He wore black skate shoes with
flashes of red and yellow flames up the sides. Heath found the rhythmic
movement of these shoes a little hypnotic and wondered if he could cajole his
mother into buying him a pair so he looked as cool as his teacher.

“Whereabouts in California are you
from?” Stephen asked.

“OC.”

“Me too,” Stephen said. “It’s a small
world.” This confused Heath because geography had taught him that in fact the
world was very big, but he said nothing.

“What part?”

“Laguna Beach.”

“Nice. I’m from Oceanside myself. What
do your parents do?”

Heath explained about his father (“he
looks for oil in the sea”) and confessed that he wasn’t sure at all what his
mother did, which made Mr. Campbell smile for some unknown reason.

“And how do you like it here?”

Heath shrugged and averted his eyes.
He was still standing uncomfortably by his desk, one hand gripping his satchel
strap, ready to flee.

“Not so much, huh?” Still Heath
didn’t reply. “Have you made any friends yet?”

Heath shook his head.

“Do you miss your mom?”

Heath found his lip quite suddenly
trembling without warning and he fought hard not to give in to the tears
flooding his eyes because he already knew well enough by age ten that big boys
didn’t cry.

“How about if I tell you it gets
easier?” Stephen said. “Would you believe me?”

Heath lifted his head. He nodded slowly
and solemnly because he would have believed the earth was flat if Mr. Campbell
said it was so.“Are you lonely too, Mr.
Campbell?”

Stephen looked taken aback. His pale
eyes sparked with an odd emotion for a fleeting instant, something Heath
couldn’t interpret.

“We all get lonely, Heathcliff. But
it’s important to remember that you’re not
alone here. I’m your friend as well as your teacher and any time you’re upset
or sad, you come to me to talk about it. Okay?”

A shy smile lit Heath’s face. He
nodded.

“All right,” Stephen said. “Go for
your lunch.”

Heath picked up his bag and moved
quickly to the door.

“And one more thing,” said his
teacher behind him. “My name’s Stephen.”

Heath turned around to look at him.
“And mine is Heath.”

“Got it, dude,” Stephen said with a
grin.

“Okay, dude.” Heath scuttled out of the
room, shocked at himself for having called Mr. Campbell dude.

At lunch, feeling brave and not so
alone, he took his tray and asked Carl Stuart, a small, scrawny geek from Durham
if he could sit next to him. Carl nodded and Heath soon found out that not
everyone at the school was southern. Durham was in the north-east of England
and Carl’s accent wasn’t posh at all. In fact, the two were soon engrossed in a
lively debate over who had the silliest accent.

Heath’s mother visited in January, a
couple of weeks after Heath had been home for a strained Christmas with his
parents. For every second of the miserable, cold atmosphere in the house by the
sea he wished he was back at Westcliff with Carl and Stephen. He guessed he
couldn’t be pleased. Even his expensive presents failed to stir him. They were
no substitute for love.

On her visit, his mother broke the
news without preamble. She had left his father.

Heath was confused by this, as he
didn’t see how you could leave a person who was away anyway on an oil-rig, but
he said nothing as his mother explained to him that mommy and daddy didn’t love
each other the way they used to do, but that they still loved him very much and
nothing was going to change.

Heath kept his eyes on the parquet floor. If you love me so much, then why I am
stuck here out of the way? But he said nothing, he only nodded at
everything his mother said and allowed her to kiss and hug him in a cloud of
expensive perfume and press money into his hand before she left.

Heath turned to look out of the
window at the snow carpeting the vast grounds of the school. He had never seen
snow before in his life. There was a time Heath would have begged his mother to
go outside with him and build a snowman, but not anymore.Now he sat and watched the other boys chasing
each other with snowballs and thought it was the end of the world.

“Aren’t you going out to play?”

Heath looked up to see Stephen. He
looked even more casual on a Sunday, wearing jeans with holes in the knees as
though he couldn’t afford any new ones and a well-worn hooded sweatshirt with
some sinister looking writing in crimson splashed across the front. Heath
suspected Stephen was into heavy metal.

Heath shook his head, biting his lip
furiously and staring at his shoes. He clenched the wad of notes in his hand
and thought about buying some of those sneakers with flames up the sides with
his mother’s bribe.

Stephen sat down on the bench next to
him. “What’s happened?”

Heath tried to speak, but all that
came from his throat was a sob and even though he wasn’t a clingy boy, he
leaned towards Stephen hoping for some comfort, stammering out words about his
mother and father before Stephen sighed and put an arm around him, gathering Heath
to his chest.

With his small fist clinging onto Stephen’s
hoodie and his face buried in the soft material as he wept, his teacher’s chest
so much harder than his mother’s breast, Heath felt like this man would be his
one and only sanctuary for the rest of his life.

Carl Stuart, who was now firmly his
best friend, told him later that week that he didn’t even have a father,
but that his mother was very rich and drove a sports car. He was sent more
money than he knew what to do with and when the weather was better, he and Heath
would go down to the village and buy milkshakes. As a token of the esteem Carl
held him in, he gave Heath one of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures to
seal their friendship.

The two of them bribed the boy Carl
was sharing a room with to change with Heath, offering him sweets and money and
soon Heath and his best friend were ensconced together leaving William and his
insects to it.

After that visit, his mother didn’t
come so often. She still wrote him letters and sent him presents. Heath ached
with some indefinable loss, like his parents losing each other meant they had lost
him too and he wondered if he would ever see his father again.

When he went home, at Easter and
during the summer holidays, she was distant and withdrawn, not the same woman
he remembered, her face pale and her slender frame fragile as though the weight
of her would crack her tiny ankles. She slept a lot and left Heath to his own
devices, where he chose to spend many hours on the beach alone, making
sandcastles, reading, skimming stones across the ocean or simply lying on the
sand and day-dreaming. He was too young to realise his fantasies about
imaginary friends or imaginary parents who took him places and spent time with
him were aspirations of hope for the future. It would take Heath many years to
realise that all he wanted from this life was to be loved.

He made more new friends - Kyle
Swinton and Oliver Morrissey - and realised not all families were as
dysfunctional as his own. Oliver’s parents were still very much together and
even kissed each other frequently in front of him, according to Oliver, while Kyle’s
were also together but apparently had blazing rows all the time, followed by
hours locked in their bedroom, doing Kyle didn’t know what, but something which
involved the bed squeaking loudly and his mother crying out like his father was
hurting her.

Heath was a good student and he
excelled at English and languages, even though he struggled with maths and knew
he always would. Stephen gave him extra tuition on a Thursday night after Heath
was reluctant to ask his actual maths master for it, a stern man with an
intimidating manner. Oliver came too, also poor at maths and Heath looked
forward to those quiet nights spent in Stephen’s front room like no other. His
teacher always had soft music playing in the background, something good that
Heath would go away with a copy of if he expressed an interest. There was
always hot chocolate and cake. Stephen had a little book he would scribble
algebra and geometry out in as the boys sat at the table with him and he would
patiently go over each problem again and again until both boys understood it.

These times were the happiest for Heath.
He felt a sense of belonging and he fantasised that Stephen was his father. He
imagined him married to his mother and doing all those things his father should
have been doing with him - taking him out, playing football with him, helping
him with his homework and teaching him how to grow up into a worthwhile man.
When it was time to go back to his own room, he would come back down to earth
with a bump. He would be reminded that Stephen was not his father and never
would be and that his own father would never be interested or concerned about
him. He would lie in the dark, listening to Carl’s soft breathing in the next
bed and he would stifle bitter tears of lonely desolation at the way he had
been abandoned.Time passed and his
mother’s visits tailed away to nothing. She explained that she was a little
sick but as soon as she was better she would come to see him with a special
present. Soon the letters stopped and Heath became anxious. He didn’t know what
to do. He was restless, confused and sad. His mother was all he had in the
world and she had deserted him.